Ruminating on the news of the day

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Pakistan

You know things are going a bit ok in Iraq based on what the news is focused on these days. Not that they shouldn’t be interested in Pakistan.Things are shaking up over there (as you would expect). Nancy Pelosi seems to think this current problem stems from the fact that we’ve ignored Musharraf’s increasing unpopularity. She doesn’t mention that his increasing unpopularity increases further everytime he takes a step towards us and away from fundamentalist Islam.

“The Bush administration enabled Musharraf’s delusion by ignoring his undemocratic acts and lack of internal support in exchange for his assistance in efforts against terrorism.”

Right. The Bush administration did what it could to keep Islamists from taking over Pakistan.

It’s interesting to get the “tone” of these stories. AFTER we were in Iraq and AFTER it was clear there were no major amounts of WMD the stories became certain that we never should have gone in. They knew that. Too bad those that knew this never had the cajones to actually argue their point with reason before the war. (not that I would have agreed, I’m just saying that the “voices of reason” didn’t bother coming out of the woodwork until after it was safe to state an oppositional opinion because things were going badly.)

Tangent: It still isn’t safe. Because once we win this thing, and Iraq does flourish and Afghanistan does improve (ps children by the thousands are now living that didn’t get to before we got there) those naysayers are going to have egg all over their faces.

Anyway – the point being that the Post will often write as if everyone knows we shouldn’t have gone into Iraq. Yet read the article on Pakistan. What is the answer? Right. Who knows right now and so they give a good news story. Stating the facts, quoting the major players and sharing the news vs tilting a story to their viewpoint.

In other news on the Middle East, Scott gives Representative Obey what for today. Obey apparently thinks the only reason things are going ok in Iraq is because the bad guys don’t have as many people to kill as they did last year. Puke.

And in Denmark, right before the elections, a right wing party has published an image of Mohammed in their campaign material to illustrate their commitment to free speech.
That should do the trick so you have to give them credit, but now circle back to Pakistan. Remember the last time there were images of Mohammed published in Denmark? Pakistan exploded. Right now the place in on the brink of ??? who knows. Let your imagination run wild as you throw in some antiwestern riots along with the Democracy now riots that are scheduled for Friday. Throw in the nukes and Osama and the Taliban and Northern India, oh and Iran.

I’ll make a prediction. Musharref is going to stay in power until next year. At that time Bhutto will win the election, and Musharref will take over the military. Bhutto will continue the “peace treaty” with the Taliban based on her “peace treaty” with Musharref. Someone is bound to get assassinated in all this and if it isn’t Musharref, then he will re-take over.